Ticketmaster and Live Nation to merge?

A trend developing during this long recession is corporate consolidation. The word “monopoly” might start rearing its ugly head if the rumored merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation were to proceed. Live Nation is a behemoth-sized concert promoter and licensing company that has drawn press for recent exclusive deals with Madonna and Jay-Z.

Meanwhile, Ticketmaster has a near lock on U.S. ticket sales and has ventured into artist management of late. The combined heft of those two companies would be enough to snuff out smaller players and would likely bring anti-trust examination from the authorities, according to the New York Times.

Sarah Zupko founded PopMatters, one of the largest independent cultural criticism magazines on the web, back in the Internet's early days of 1999. Zupko is a former Executive Producer for Tribune Media Services, the media syndication arm of the Tribune Company, and a 10-year veteran of Tribune. Her other pursuits involve writing historical fiction and research in the fields of Slavic and German history, as well as general European cultural and intellectual history. Zupko studied musicology, film, and drama at the University of Chicago and media theory at the University of Texas, where she received her M.A.